We got to Campeche on Saturday night, and for a few minutes there, we didn’t know how we were going to get to Uxmal, the next leg of our journey. A tourist official told us no buses went from Campeche to Uxmal. Employees at the Best Western concurred. I thought: Should we hire a driver? Attempt to bus it to Merida first? Uxmal was only an hour-and-a-half away by car, for gosh’s sakes. There had to be a public transportation route somewhere.
Luckily Joy ducked into a hostel in Campeche’s Centro Historico, and a nice worker told her that a second-class bus left for Uxmal the next morning at 9 a.m. So, bright and early the next day, we found the bus terminal and off we went, through rural Campeche and rural Yucatán, Michael Jackson and early 90s grunge blasting on the bus’s speakers. (Yay for drivers with good taste.)
Women with babies and old ladies in bright, embroidered huipiles got on and off; so did men with loose, unbuttoned shirts and backpacks. People rode bikes on the side of the road. Quaint, chubby little Mayan homes with thatched roofs lay here and there.
At 12:30, the bus pulled over and opened its doors.
“Is this the Uxmal stop?” I asked the bus driver. He nodded and looked bored.
There wasn’t much to see; just the road and a few buildings. Also, I really had to go to the bathroom. I had been dreaming of using the restroom at our very nice hacienda hotel for the past hour. And now this music dude was dropping us off on dirt — it was almost too much to bear. I tried calm myself using my yoga breathing.
Joy went to ask where the hell we were, and thankfully we happened to be at the hotel itself, in the back. I’d never been so happy to see a bathroom. Next time I’m not drinking two cups of coffee and half a bottle of water before getting on a three-hour bus.
The view at our hotel:
Did you see the fascinating video of our bus ride on Chilangabacha? http://chilangabacha.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/mexico-in-15-seconds/